Coming Home
by amberlizabeth
Summary: For Molly. I didn't intend to publish this so soon (it hasn't really been edited) but I this was all I could think of to maybe slightly cheer you up. I apologize for the grammar and I don't own anything.


Oliver is always on the island.

He can be looking at Thea, or listening to his mother, or wearing the hood, but part of him is always on the island. Oliver can hear the waves on the beach. There's an ache in his bones and he never feels full. Some days, it's like he never left.

The first time he forgets the island, even for a second, is the day he meets Felicity Smoke.

She's swiveling restlessly and chewing on a pen. For a moment, just a flash, he is just there. He's just Oliver and she's just the cute IT girl. There's no island. There's no Hood. He can feel the sun through the window, he can hear the hum of her computer, and her smile makes him feel his heartbeat throughout his entire body.

The first time he really smiles since the island is the day he meets Felicity Smoke. It makes his cheeks hurt. He wonders if he's ever actually smiled like that before.

Oliver likes to think he can pretty much lie to anyone. He finds this is not so much the case with Felicity.

When he lies to her, she stares right at him, like she can see everything, like she can read him as easy as code. He's terrified because she's about a million times smarter than him. She's easily the smartest person he's ever met and he only just met her.

He knows after the second or third time that he should stop going to see her. It's only a matter of time before she figures it out. It's too dangerous, but he finds himself handing her an arrow anyway. He just smiles and tries to pretend he's getting away with it. Felicity narrows her eyes, but doesn't ask questions. Which, Oliver figures, must be the first time that's ever happened.

He can't stay away. Felicity makes him forget for a little while. She makes him laugh.

Oliver knows things are really fucked when he's dying in her backseat. There's a look in her eyes, the one everybody has had since he got back, that tells him she'll never look at him the same.

"This explains so much about you," she says.

Part of him thinks she always knew. Even from that first meeting. She was just smart enough not to go poking around. She doesn't look at him the same, but she doesn't look at him like everybody else.

Oliver is not that smart, he's willing to admit, because he can't stay away from her. He should keep her out of the whole thing, but that would mean not seeing her. Maybe, never seeing her again. He can't help himself. He can't let her go.

"It's like physics or some shit," he tells Diggle after too much vodka.

"You guys," Diggle slurs and shrugs his shoulders, "It's inevitable."

"Did you steal that from a movie?"

When Slade takes Laurel, he finally realizes what he's probably known for a while: he doesn't love Laurel anymore. He cares about her, loves her as a friend, but there are some things you can't come back from.

Plus, he realizes, he's butt crazy in love with Felicty Smoak. He also realizes he's totally fucked.

For a second, when he tells her, he thinks she might actually see right through him. He thinks she can tell he isn't lying. Then Felicity's face falls and she nods. She understands his plans, but she didn't get the message.

He almost tells her that he wasn't just pretending. Almost.

Once they drop Felicity off at her house, Diggle slaps him on the back of the head, "You idiot."

Oliver sighs, "I know."

Sara is drunk. Oliver is not drunk, but he's not exactly sober.

"You love her," Sara gestures to nothing.

Oliver knows who she means. Roy said the same thing last week. Everyone can see it.

"Yeah."

"So…" Sara punches him in the arm. "Do something."

"I can't…" He searches for the word.

If he lost Felicity, he'd be back on the island. If he lost Felicity, it would be worse than the island.

Oliver never really believed he could be happy. Even back before the island, and the list, and Slade, and everything.

And then he met Felicity Smoak.

Sara looks at him, and she's totally clear, "Ollie, you just gotta do something. I knew from the second I met her, I knew you loved her."

"Sara," Oliver says. "I loved you, too."

She gestures vaguely again, "We're just best friends, who are great at having sex together. That girl is your _person_."

He smiles cause he knows it's true.

He asks Felicity on a date and she almost dies. He makes himself stay on the island. For good. Only now, the sun shines a little brighter and the waves crashing on the beach remind him of her laugh. It makes him sick.

Most of the time it's darkness. Most of the time it hurts.

He repeats the reasons he can't be with her. He reminds himself of the reasons he has to stay on the island.

The last time Felicity looked at him, it was like she couldn't see him anymore. Like she didn't understand him.

She looked at him like he was on the island again. He reminds himself of that. He reminds himself that he never really left the island in the first place.

Honestly, he doesn't even remember half his time with Ra's. It all blurs together with the island. It blurs so much, that he almost forgets her.

Her smiles breaks through to him for the first time in ages and it feels more like coming home than when he got back to the island. Because she's right there. Felicity.

It's not their first kiss, but now he's also sure it won't be their last.


End file.
